BLEACH typeTWO
by Time To Make It Rain
Summary: Kurosaki Karin led a relatively normal life except for the whole seeing ghosts thing until a monster demolished her house and she was drafted as a defender of the afterlife.
1. Soccer Girl And The Soul Reaper

**BLEACH typeTWO**

**volume the FIRST – Soccer Girl And The Soul Reaper**

_We fear that which we cannot see_

* * *

**chapter ONE (I)**

"**Soccer Girl And The Soul Reaper"**

**2:23 AM, FRIDAY**

**KARAKURA TOWN**

The night air was cool. A gentle breeze stirred it, moving across the rooftops. The raven-haired girl standing on thin air some eight meters above the ground did not feel it. The stirrings of crude matter simply passed through her without so much as a ripple. A black swallowtail butterfly circled around her.

_I feel it here_, she thought to herself. _Strange…I sense enormous spirit energy._

* * *

**1:43 PM, FRIDAY**

**KARAKURA TOWN**

_Kurosaki Karin_

_13 years old_

_Hair: Black_

_Eyes: Brown_

_Occupation: Middle School Student_

_Special Skill:_

"-and if the discriminant is positive, there are two solutions," the teacher said, chalk scritch-scritching on the board. Karin dutifully copied this down.

The boxer-clad old man ghost sitting on her desk yawned loudly, causing the chain dangling from his chest to jingle. Karin's scowl deepened, but she dutifully continued her note-taking.

The old man stood up, with much creaking of joints and grunts of discomfort, and shuffled towards the door. As he passed the teacher, he patted her behind. A chorus of giggles erupted from the back of the room.

Karin's pencil snapped.

_Kurosaki Karin_

_13 years old_

_Hair: Black_

_Eyes: Brown_

_Occupation: Middle School Student_

_SPECIAL SKILL: _

She looked back over her shoulder, murder in her eyes. Three little girls floated in the back of the classroom, faces purple from suffocation, lengths of broken chain dangling from their chests. They pointed and giggled at the look of irritation on her face.

"_SHE CAN SEE GHOSTS"_

* * *

Later that afternoon, Karin was walking home, absently kicking a soccer ball as she walked. She was not looking where her feet were going, and a tilted pavement slab caught her foot, causing her to trip and boot the soccer ball across the street at shoulder-level, at a not-insignificant speed. Karin followed its flight with her eyes. It was headed right for an older girl walking on the other side of the street.

Karin's shout of warning caught in her throat as the ball hit the girl…and passed right through her to hit the ground with a thump. The girl looked at it, then turned to look at her.

Karin scowled. Another ghost. They were everywhere these days. She walked across the street to retrieve her soccer ball. The girl had already lost interest in Karin and continued to walk. "Stupid human," she muttered as she walked. "That felt really gross."

Karin glared at her back. The girl's strange outfit finally came to her attention. She was clad in a black gi and hakama and straw sandals, like some sort of goth samurai wannabe. A white scabbard hung at her side, and Karin saw the hilt of a sword protruding from it.

"Hey!" she barked. "You wanna talk about stupid? What's up with that outfit?"

The girl froze. Slowly, she turned to look at Karin. "Excuse me?" she said.

"You heard me, samurai wannabe," Karin said.

"You can see me?!" the girl said. Karin almost laughed at the expression of shock on her face.

"I really hope that was a rhetorical question," Karin said. "Of course I can see you. You haven't answered _my _question. What is up with that outfit? Did you die at an anime convention or something?"

"You dare speak that way to me?!" the girl barked. "Insolent worm!" She held out her hand, palm outwards, index and middle fingers raised, the others curled in her palm. "Binding spell the first! _Sai_!"

Karin's arms were yanked behind her and held together by an unseen force. She teetered for a moment, then fell onto her rear. It hurt.

"Stay there until you learn some manners!" the black-clad girl said smugly. With a swish, she vanished.

--

It took the invisible ropes two hours to fade enough for Karin to break free. She had managed to get to her feet and walk home almost immediately after the girl had vanished, whereupon she had gone immediately upstairs and spent all of her homework time struggling with the magical bonds. It had left her in a foul mood, and she had had to work like a dog to get her homework done.

She was sitting at the dinner table, eating the cooling dinner, when Ichigo finally got home.

"I'm home," he said as he closed the door behind him.

_No shit_, Karin thought to herself.

"You're LATE!!" bellowed Isshin as he jump-kicked his son in the head. "Do you know what time it is, delinquent?! Dinner in this house is at 7:00 sharp every night!!"

"Jerk!" Ichigo shouted back. "Is this how you greet our son who just helped a ghost find peace?!"

"No excuses! The rules of my house are iron! You break 'em, you gotta bleed!" Isshin snapped. He leaned towards his son, a scowl straight out of a manga on his face. "Or maybe you just want to rub it in my face that you can see ghosts and I can't!? Why can't I have the gift?!"

"Shut up! I didn't ask for it!"

"Please stop fighting!" Yuzu said. "Dinner's getting cold!"

"Let them fight, Yuzu," Karin said. "Leaves more for us."

"Your rules are way too strict!! Decent fathers don't make their teenage sons be home by 7:00!!" Ichigo declared, adopting a wrathful finger-pointing stance as clichéd and corny as his father's sneer.

"Ah! Ichigo, I think you have a new 'friend' haunting you," Yuzu said.

Ichigo looked over his shoulder. A grinning, middle-aged salaryman floated there. "Gah! When did you…? I exorcise one and another latches itself onto me! Crap!"

"He sees them, talks to them, touches them, and channels them," Karin said. "A quadruple threat. Must be a pain, strawberry, being in such high demand."

"But you know, we are bound to be a little jealous of you, Ichigo," said Yuzu. "They're just blurry shapes to me. I'd love to see one clearly."

Karin had a sudden flashback to the boxer-clad old man's ghost in her algebra class. "Not me," she said sourly, sipping her miso soup. "I don't believe in ghosts."

"Eh? But you see them too, Karin! Only Daddy can't," Yuzu said. Stung by the truth, Isshin assumed a pose of dejection and gloom in the corner.

"Dummy. I'm in permanent denial. If I refuse to believe in them, it's like they don't exist," Karin said, voice arctic. Then, suddenly, her scowl vanished. "So anyway, I have a new plan." She pulled an index card from her pocket and began to read from it. "'Want to flirt with ghosts while being caressed by the first breeze of summer? A limited engagement for the month of May, the Karuizawa ghost picnic.'"

"Last month was cherry blossom watching, right?" Yuzu asked.

"Dammit, Karin!!" Ichigo shouted, pounding the table. "You're not making money off of my grief!! I'm not a freakshow!!"

With a triumphant cry of "Dropped your guard!", Isshin fell from the sky like a heavy falling thing, knocking Ichigo to the floor. There was a brief pause.

Ichigo flung Isshin into the wall. He hit with a splat and slid down to puddle on the floor.

"That's it! I'm going to bed!" the orange-haired teenager said, storming up the stairs.

"He left. It's your fault, Dad," Karin said.

"What'd I do?!" Isshin asked plaintively.

"Ichigo's been under a lot of pressure lately! He says more ghosts than ever have been haunting him. He's fed up!" Yuzu said.

Karin turned this over in her mind. She had been seeing a lot more of the dear departed lately than she was used to (and a hell of a lot more than she enjoyed). _Needy bastards_, she thought to herself.

"What?! He talks about that kind of stuff with you?!" Isshin demanded. "That boy…why doesn't he come to _me_ with his problems?"

"Are you serious?" Karin asked him. "I wouldn't bring my problems to you either. You're over 40 yet you have the emotional maturity of a preschooler."

Isshin choked out an inarticulate noise of crushing despair. Lower lip stuck out in an exaggerated expression of sadness, he turned to the gigantic memorial poster of his late wife on the wall. "Masaki…" he whined. "Maybe it's because they've hit puberty, but our daughters treat me like dirt…What should I do?"

"First, take down that stupid memorial picture," said Karin, turning away from him. She tuned out her family's weirdness and ate.

The first thing to cut through her haze of dissatisfaction and aimless anger was a blood-curdling howl that sent ice water down her spine and shook her water glass. The second was a cold pressure on a part of her that she hadn't even known existed until that second. She choked on her food, spluttering. Her chair screeched across the floor as she leapt to her feet.

"Did you guys hear that?" she asked.

"Hear what?" Yuzu asked.

Karin opened her mouth to respond…and the wall exploded. A chunk of masonry hit the table and flipped it, slamming her backwards. She landed with a short scream. A second blood-curdling howl ripped through her, agonizingly loud and nearby. It was followed by a scream that Karin recognized. Yuzu's.

She crawled out from under the table. Her eyes widened. There was a hole nearly three meters across in the wall. Silhouetted in it was a hulking, grotesque monster with a body like an ape and a white-masked head like a fish's. In one of its long-fingered fists, Yuzu was clutched like a crumpled piece of paper.

Isshin lay off to one side, his shoulder a bloody mess.

"Wha-" Karin mumbled. "What _is_ that?" Her eyes widened. The monster leaned in, sniffing Yuzu like a hungry dog. It opened its mouth wide. "NO!!" Karin screamed.

The monster froze. At first Karin thought it was looking at her, but then it twitched its head backwards. A black blur flitted across her vision, and a spray of blood erupted from the monster's arm, just below the elbow. Karin blinked. The monster shrieked, and tossed Yuzu aside. She hit the pavement outside and skidded. Karin winced in sympathy. She turned and looked at the monster, then followed the line of its gaze. Her jaw dropped.

"_You?!_" she said.

The raven-haired girl form earlier stood confronting the monster. The sword she held in an easy, practiced grip was wet with blood. She did not hear Karin.

"Now you die!" she spat, and leapt at the monster, which swung at her with a shriek. Karin seized the moment to crawl fully out from under the table. She darted across the room, making for her sister.

As she passed through the hole in the wall, the sword-wielding girl saw her. Her eyes widened. "Her?" she said, disbelieving.

The monster's fist caught her on her sword arm and slapped her through the still-closed front door and out into the street. She hit the wall opposite the Kurosaki house with a crack.

Karin ran to her sister, whose back was scraped raw by its brush with the asphalt. She choked down rising bile at the smell of blood and felt for a pulse. She found one easily, strong but racing, so she checked her sister's head for wounds or breaks with gently probing fingers. She found nothing to concern her, although there was a shallow gash on her forehead that was bleeding enthusiastically. She was about to tear a strip off of her shirt to bandage it when something blocked out the streetlight. Karin turned, already knowing what was there. The monster stood over her, a line of saliva hanging from its mouth. She shuddered.

Suddenly, she heard Ichigo's voice, raised in a wordless battle cry. The hollow turned and swung a fist. There was another crash of breaking house. Then the monster shrieked in pain. It reared back, bashed its head on the ceiling (through the ceiling, really), and clawed at its face. Karin saw a baseball bat protruding from its eyesocket. She giggled despite the marked grimness of the situation, for it was a comical sight.

"Girl," came a hoarse cry. Karin turned. The black-clad ghost was looking at her, sitting against the wall. "Girl," she said again.

Karin left Yuzu and ran to her. The girl coughed, then spoke again. "My arms are broken," she said. "I can't fight it."

Karin blinked. "Shit."

"I can loan you a portion of my powers," she continued. "But the chance of success is low, and if I fail you die."

Karin mentally weighed her options. A) Get eaten by monster, B) Try to do something. "Whatever. Do it," she said.

"Take my sword and run it through your heart," the girl said.

Karin froze. "Are you serious?"

"Just do it or we all die!!" the girl yelled.

"Oh, crap," Karin said as she grabbed the snow-white blade and held its point to her chest.

"Your heart is a little further up," the girl said helpfully.

"Shut up!" Karin said. She threw herself forwards. There was an explosion.

The monster froze, just as it was about to give Ichigo an exclusive tour of its innards. It turned to look over its shoulder. The last thing it saw was a black blur emerging from the cloud of smoke.

Karin's first strike cut its legs off below the knees. Her second split its head (and the floor). She sighed in relief, then stood up, looking around. The house was in ruins. Ichigo was buried in the wall from the shoulders up, but he was wriggling, so he was alive. Isshin was unconscious and bleeding. Yuzu was lying in the street, as was the other girl. Karin sighed again, this time in concern. She was about to take a step when the monster vanished from underneath her. She fell and struck her head on the floor, and all was blackness.

Across the street, Kuchiki Rukia struggled to her feet, grimacing at the pain in her arms. She looked down at herself, and gaped. Her shihaukshō was gone, replaced by the plain white robes of a soul newly arrived in Soul Society. "No…" she said. "I meant for only half…I have lost all of my powers." She looked at the zanpakutō stuck in the floor. It was almost as tall as she was. The blade was as tall as its wielder, and its hilt added another thirty centimeters or so. The blade was also as wide across as her hand from wrist to the tip of her middle finger.

"The zanpakutō…it's huge," she said faintly. She looked at the unconscious Karin. "Who _is_ this child?"

The sound of footsteps caught her attention. She turned around. A man in a green-and-white-striped hat and geta sandals stood there, a cane in his hand. "My, my," he said. "What a mess." He looked at Rukia. "Hello," he said warmly. "My name is Urahara, and I am a purveyor of fine goods and certain services." He waved at the chaos. "I can fix all of this – for a small fee, of course."

Rukia looked at him suspiciously. "Two people who can see a shinigami in one day? That stretches belief." She looked at him for a moment. "Fine."

Urahara clapped his hands. "Excellent! By the way, would you like to rent a gigai?"


	2. who DOESN'T want to be a SUPERHERO?

**BLEACH typeTWO**

**chapter TWO (II)**

"**who DOESN'T want to be a SUPERHERO?"**

* * *

Karin woke up quickly. Mind flooding with monsters and blood and screams, she sat up in bed, breathing harshly. Her eyes made a circuit of her bedroom. Everything was normal. Yuzu's bed was empty, but that was normal as well. She woke up a half-hour early every day to make breakfast.

Karin climbed out of bed and walked into the hallway. She smelled pancakes and fresh air. "Not a dream, then," she muttered to herself. She began to walk downstairs, then paused. She was not wearing the clothes she had worn yesterday. Had the strange girl changed her clothes? That was an awkward thought.

She shook herself and walked downstairs.

Yuzu was at the stove, making pancakes. Isshin was sweeping the smaller pieces of rubble into a dustpan. The larger pieces sat outside the hole in a heap. Karin looked at her father and sister. No wounds on either of them.

"Mornin', dad," she said. "Morni', Yuzu."

"Good morning, Karin!!" Isshin said with his customary exuberance.

"You just exceeded your exclamation point limit for the century," Karin said. She walked past him and to the fridge.

As she poured herself a glass of orange juice, Yuzu spoke. "Did you see the wall?" she asked, awe in her voice.

Karin looked at her sister. Looked at the wall. Looked back at her sister.

"Yes, Yuzu, I saw the wall," she said in her _are-you-really-that-stupid_ voice. Any further condescension would have been counterproductive, so she left it at that.

"Dad says it must have been a truck or something," Yuzu continued, heedless of her sister's coldness. "amazing none of us woke up."

"Jerk left us the repair bill," Karin said absently. She drank her orange juice and sat down at the table, which was mysteriously unbroken. _The table is no longer in pieces,_ she observed. _Yuzu thinks it was a truck. So does Goat Chin. Their wounds are gone. Did the girl do that?_

* * *

The question would remain unanswered for the next eight hours (wasted in school). As Karin walked home with Yuzu, they passed a playground. Karin remembered this playground. It had been just too far from their house for her parents to let her play at it unsupervised when she was little, but she had gone there several times to take advantage of the larger area in which to hone her soccer skills. The scolding her parents had given her when they finally caught on was minor, but she had bawled like a baby anyways.

Then, later that month, Masaki had died. That day was the last one she had cried.

The thought did bring a scowl to her face. A flash of movement from the corner of her vision caught her eye, and she turned. Her eyes widened. "Yuzu, go on ahead. I'll catch up," she said.

"Huh? Okay…" her sister said. She walked away, sneaking concerned looks back a t Karin over her shoulder.

Karin walked into the playground. She set herself down on a park bench. "I have questions," she said.

"That's to be expected," the raven-haired girl said. "Ask away."

"Number one-" Karin began, turning to the girl. She raised an eyebrow. "Number one, what happened to the goth samurai look?"

The girl was dressed in a baggy white t-shirt with the words "Urahara Shoten" printed across the front in black, and tight black pants that were clearly too small for her, coming down only to midcalf. "I don't want to talk about it," she snapped. "Bad enough this is all he had. Worse, he's charging me for it."

"Who?"

"That hat-wearing _freak_ and his stable of _freak henchmen!_" The girl took a calming breath. "Next question."

"What was that thing that smashed my house?" Karin asked.

"A hollow. An evil spirit, a ghost that lost its center and became a monster. They eat souls, the more powerful the better." She placed a hand on her chest. "And that is where we come in."

"Who's we?" Karin asked.

"The shinigami. We perform konsō and defeat hollows. It's our job."

Karin blinked. "Shinigami? As in _shinigami_ shinigami?"

"Yep! Kuchiki Rukia, Gotei 13, 13th Division, pleased to meet you."

"Kurosaki Karin," Karin responded reflexively. "…Don't you have wings and evil notebooks?"

Rukia blinked. "Excuse me?" she said, uncomprehending.

"Nevermind, pop culture reference." Karin frowned. "What's konsō?"

"Humans call it passing on. It's a ceremony – not much of a ceremony, just tap 'em on the forehead with the hilt of your zanpakutō and poof, they're off – to send ghosts to the Soul Society." Anticipating the next question, she continued. "The place you call heaven."

Karin nodded her understanding. "What's it like there?"

Rukia shrugged. "Better than here. You don't get hungry or sick, and hollow attacks are rare."

There was a moment of quiet. "So why are you here?" Karin asked. "The hollow's dead. What do you want now?"

"Ah," Rukia said. "It seems that rather than the half I meant to give you, you now have all of my powers. Which is really, really annoying, because now I'm stuck in this stupid gigai, which is actually _costing me money_ to rent from that _asshole_ Urahara!" She took several deep breaths. "Anyway, the point is that until I get my powers back you have to do my job."

Karin blanched. "What." (The question mark had most definitely been exchanged for a period.)

"Until I-"

"I heard you!!" she shouted. "No way! One was quite enough for me, thank you! I don't intend to make a career of it!"

Rukia looked at her, face grim. "Alright," she said. She pulled a red glove with a flaming skull insignia on it from her pocket. "Let me show you something." She shoved Karin in the chest with her gloved hand, pushing her off of the bench.

Karin scrambled to her feet. "What was that for?!" She caught sight of her body, slumped on the bench. "What the hell?! Is that _me_?!"

"Just your body. It will be fine for an hour or so. Long enough for our purposes." She pulled a blocky cellphone from her pocket and held it out.

Karin took it. There were three lines of text on the screen.

_YUMIZAWA CHILDREN'S PARK_

_20M_

_1600 __8_

"What is this?" she asked.

"It's an order from the Soul Society. It means that within eight minutes of four o'clock, in either direction, a hollow will appear within a twenty-meter radius of Yumizawa Children's Park. That's this park, in case you didn't know," Rukia explained. She took Karin's body's wrist and checked her watch. "It's 3:53 right now." She looked down across the park and sighed. "You know the ghost who lives here?"

Karin blinked. "Um. There's a little boy who plays here at about noon or so every day. But he doesn't ever stay this late."

Rukia shook her head. "Not him. There's an old woman who haunts the maple tree by the swingset. She never leaves, but she's quiet, so it's no wonder you missed her."

"I don't come here that often," Karin interrupted.

"Shut up. As I was saying, when the hollow appears it will doubtless eat her," Rukia said.

Karin's eyes widened. She looked at the tree, then around the park. Her hand found the hilt of the zanpakutō on her back.

"Don't go anywhere," Rukia said coldly. "Don't so much as raise a hand to save her. Not unless you're prepared to do the same for every ghost in Karakura. You can't just save them when it's convenient or when you're in the mood. People's souls are at stake here."

There was a tense silence. "Fine," Karin spat. She held out her hand. "Who doesn't want to be a superhero?"

Rukia shook the offered hand. A bloodcurdling scream ripped the air. "That's your cue," she said.

Grumbling, Karin leaped over the fence and was gone.


	3. HeadHittin'

**BLEACH typeTWO**

**chapter THREE (III)**

"**Head-Hittin'"**

* * *

"I know all about it, my sister. It's all hidden, isn't it? In that jade box Mother gave you. Give me that box, Marianne! Go on!" Rukia read ot herself. Then, in a higher voice, "No! Don't open that box! Francoise! Noooo!!"

Karin clapped her hands beside Rukia's ear. The powerless shinigami leapt nearly a foot in the air. She whirled around. "Ooooh! You scared me!!"

"You were reading a stupid horror comic while I was training my butt off. I am not impressed," Karin said coldly.

"I was studying the contemporary vernacular of this world!" Rukia protested.

"By reading a stupid horror comic. Go read _Shonen Jump_ or something. You look like a total freak sitting there reading out loud to yourself."

Rukia gritted her teeth. "What do you want?" she asked.

"I hit the stupid pepper balls a hundred times like you said," Karin answered, tapping the pitching machine with the bat. "What exactly was this supposed to accomplish?"

Rukia blinked. "You idiot!! Only the _wrong_ balls had pepper in them!!"

"How the hell am I supposed to tell hands from heads the way you draw!?" Karin yelled back, holding up two of the nearly identical balls for emphasis. "I did the best I could!!"

The two women glared at one another. Dramatic flames crackled in the background.

"So why did I do this?" Karin asked, breaking the tension.

"To improve your technique. The essence of hollow hunting is to kill from behind with a single blow to the head. It's the safest and most efficient way to do it. A hollow can survive any attack that doesn't damage its head or the hole in its chest. Oftentimes, they'll even regrow lost limbs after a few meals. But one solid whack to the head will split it like a melon, and there's no coming back from that," Rukia explained, flipping pages in her sketchbook to show the appropriate diagrams.

"Your drawings suck," Karin said.

Rukia threw the sketchbook at her. In the blink of an eye, the two women were nose-to-nose again and the dramatic flames were back, this time with lightning as well.

"The hell was that for?" Karin growled.

"And where do you get off criticizing my art, you insolent little tart?" Rukia spat.

"If I say your art sucks, it sucks," Karin said with a sneer. "Wat are you going to do about it, huh?"

"Oh, it's on."

"It _is_ on."

"Let's take this outside."

"You are outside," came a puzzled voice.

The two women whirled towards the interloper.

"Ah!" Rukia said. "Um…Inoue-san, right?"

"Yes! I'm glad you remembered me!" the tall, buxom girl said cheerfully.

"Who's this?" Karin asked Rukia.

"Inoue-san from my class at school," Rukia explained.

"Since when to shini_gff-_" Karin began. Rukia clapped a hand over her mouth.

"Ignore the peasant," she commanded breezily. "What brings you here, Inoue-san?"

Orihime thought for a moment. "Um…I was getting food for dinner, and I was walking by and saw you here, so I just thought I'd stop and say hi!"

"Oh. Okay…nice talking to you, then," Rukia said.

"What's the story with your arm?" Karin asked.

"Oh, this?" Orihime asked, pointing at the bandage. "I got run over last night."

"Seriously?"

"Yup! I was out buying a drink and wham!" Her expression turned thoughtful. "I've been getting run over a lot lately." She giggled.

Rukia and Karin both raised eyebrows. "Sounds like you get hurt a lot," Karin said.

"I daydream…" Orihime said dreamily.

"Uh-huh," Karin said.

Rukia frowned. "Inoue-san, may I look at the bruise on your leg?"

_Bruise on her-whoah. Shit, how'd I miss that?_ Karin wondered. _That's a whopper, alright._

"Huh? Oh, sure," Orihime said. Rukia knelt to inspect it. "I must have gotten it last night when the car's fender hit me," Orihime said. She looked at Rukia, whose face was twisted into a scowl. "Kuchiki-san? Why are you looking at it like that?"

Rukia looked up, wiping the scowl from her features. "Oh…it just looks so painful."

"How did you know? My leg hurts worse than my arm!" Orihime said, astonished.

"That doesn't surprise me," Rukia said grimly. She stood with a sigh. "Well, take care."

Orihime nodded. "I will!" She turned to leave, then paused. She turned back. "I almost forgot!" she said. "Who are you?" she asked Karin.

"Kurosaki Karin," the younger girl answered.

Orihime blinked. "Kurosaki? Are you Ichigo's little sister?"

Karin nodded. "For my sins."

Orihime giggled. Her face grew wistful. "Nice meeting you," she said. "Bye-bye." She turned and drifted away.

Rukia and Karin watched her go.

"Did you notice?" the older girl asked the younger.

"Notice what?"

"The bruise. All of her, actually. She stinks of hollow."

Karin blinked. "She's a hollow?"

Rukia shook her head. "No. But there is one close to her. A friend, maybe, or a family member." She snorted. "With her figure it could be a deranged ex-lover."

"I don't understand. You mean, the hollow is possessing them?"

"No, I mean they are the hollow. All hollows were ghosts once, but they were consumed by loneliness, or hate, or regret or obsession or something else, and they became monsters." Rukia looked at Karin. "They don't eat souls because they're hungry. They eat it because they're in pain. Eventually, the emptiness inside eats up their mind and their memories, everything that makes them _them_. They take other people's feelings and memories and lives because they don't have any of their own that are worth having. But it doesn't help." She looked away. More softly, she continued. "Truly, they are pitiable creatures."

"Wait," Karin said, face pale. "Are you saying I killed two people?"

Rukia looked back. The melancholy was replaced by a relieved grin. "No, no. Killing a hollow isn't really _killing_ it. The zanpakutō cleanses hollows of sin and sends them to the Soul Society. Don't worry about it."

Karin eyed her suspiciously. "I could have stood knowing about this earlier. We need to work on our communication." A thought came to her. "If there's a hollow hunting her, why hasn't it attacked yet?"

Rukia's face grew grim. "It will," she said. "Soon."


End file.
